Everywhere! Broadband claims it will shortly be launching a broadband-by-satellite service in the UK (via Eutelsat) which will give consumers unable to get broadband via ADSL or cable access to download speeds of 1Mb/sec for £19.95 a month. SatDrive (also a Eutelsat partner) is already offering a similar deal for £14.99 a month. Alas, it isn’t quite as good as it seems:

• Charges don’t include the cost of your telephone, which will have to be connected as long as you are doing any “active surfing” (you can disconnect once you have requested a big download, however, and you will be notified of new email without needing to dial up).
• Files will arrive very quickly, but I am told that at least with existing satellite services there is often an annoying delay before any given file starts to be downloaded (this is because of the distance between you and the satellite). This also makes satellite Internet pretty hopeless for online gaming.
• In the case of Satdrive at least (for Everywhere it is not clear) the bandwidth on offer is shared, so if others on the same service are downloading large files your own download speeds may drop.
• Everywhere! installation costs “from £99”, and Satdrive’s installation costs £399+ (unless you already have the equipment).

Last but not least, one has to wonder how they can afford to offer this service for such low prices. But this is still unquestionably good news…

The BBC covers an interesting report on what made broadband work in South Korea (which has 60% household penetration – the highest in the world). It was strongly backed by government and sold to the public as an educational and entertainment tool. Also, there are several competing sources of broadband and helpfully, “80% of the population live in urban areas and nearly half of those live in large apartment blocks with a single communication room for broadband connections.”

Also see a more lengthy article in Wired which concentrates more on the social side…

I do wish there were more articles around about this – though I suspect that many of the things that made broadband work in Korea would be hard to reproduce elsewhere, like the more group-oriented culture and the dense population.

The broadband message is starting to get through – this is three times the number who had broadband at the start of the year, though there is still a long way to go. C’mon people – you won’t regret it!only interest loan 10007 loan up home checkagent mortgage and loan5 loan credit no check1 loans pay hour dayinc american loan homepersonal bankruptcy after loan unsecured creditmortgage rate 2nd loanscredit loan bad 1000mortgage loan home refinance 1st

A UK technology journalist (from The Register) describes his woes trying to get GPRS (modem speed Internet access) to work on his mobile phone…

The UK still trails the rest of Europe in broadband takeup – 14% of UK homes have it, compared to 45% in Germany and 22% in France. Mind you, these figures include ISDN (and I wouldn’t, since it is metered and one of the most important things about broadband is not that it is fast but that it is always on…). The DTI told the BBC that in most other European countries 90% of broadband is provided by one operator and that prices here are dropping while there they are rising.

Of course our prices are dropping- they have been too high too long… And competition to provide broadband has not been that strong – the cable companies have captive markets and not much money to spend on promotion, while BT controls the infrastructure to ADSL provision even if a few other ADSL providers “re-badge” their service.

However there is a little good news on the horizon – Todmorden in West Yorkshire has reached the “trigger” number of interested customers via BT’s “register your interest” website for it to be upgraded to ADSL. Now 3/4 of those who said they were interested have to put their money where their mouths are and subscribe. If they do they could have broadband by Xmas.

At the beginning of July, British Telecom launched a scheme to allow people not currently served by ADSL to express an interest. BT said that if 2-400 people at an individual exchange signed up at their site they would consider upgrading it to provide ADSL. Nearly two months later after a fair amount of press coverage fewer than 50,000 people have signed up and the exchange nearest to being upgraded is still only halfway there.

Rise up, rural people of Britain! You have nothing to lose but your modems and the world to gain!

According to a reports by BBC News Online and ZDNet, several small UK companies are starting to re-sell BT’s “no frills” ADSL for less than the “magic” £20 a month. But since it costs £14.75 a month wholesale, BT says they can’t make money (BT charges £27 a month for its no frills service).

I wonder how it is that ADSL costs the equivalent of £18 in Ontario, Canada – a price that includes the email addresses, free technical support and web space that BT says it can’t afford to offer for nearly £10 more…

An article from Telephony magazine in the US explains how local government engineers in the Appalachians are forming their own broadband carrier using wireless technology because the telco in the area wasn’t interested in providing it at a reasonable price.

Allegany County already had a complex broadband wireless network in place to serve its government offices and schools.

“Connecting the county’s sparse, widespread populace with fiber would have cost $180 million. By comparison, the radio buildout will cost the county between $2.9 million and $5 million, most of which the county plans to raise through state grants, Blank said. With that investment, Allconet will be able to offer 85% of the county’s population, 95% of its businesses and 100% of its business parks broadband access.

For consumers, each base station will transmit 360° on the 2.4 GHz unlicensed frequencies offering 3 Mb/s of capacity. For business customers, Allconet will transmit from the same base stations using the 5.8 GHz frequency to offer up to 60 Mb/s of capacity.”

…

“Allconet will be able to lease a DS-3 [44.736 Mbps] for $3500 per month, while its equivalent in the high-tech corridor of northern Virginia runs $14,500. ”

New link: More on this from the New York Times.0 loan mobile down home paymentloans 1 day hour payloan canada 20,15 10 paydayloan 10 14 paydaypayday loan 10 14 search canadianloan 11 payday linkloan business payday 12 20,1813 information payday 19 loanloans 20 14 loan loans payday21 payday canada loan payday 15

British Telecom has announced a database which will let users register their interest in ADSL in areas not already served, and will publish a threshold indicating how many users are needed to make upgrading the local exchange commercially viable. This will make the process of deciding who gets broadband and who doesn’t much more transparent.

The Register reports that the Government from end of July will allow commercial provision of public Wi-Fi/802.11b networks.

“Previously, public WLANs in the UK could only be set up and used if no money changed hands, and operators were supposed to obtain a Wireless Telegraphy Act licence. However operators will still need a Telecommunications Act licence.”

This move should make it a lot easier not just for companies like Starbucks and BT to offer wireless Internet access but also for non-profit community organizations to make it available without as much red tape.